Many materials come packaged in buckets or pails. For example, plastic five-gallon buckets are very popular for storing and handling a wide variety of materials such as paint, plastics, resins, water, fuel, food products, liquid chemicals, construction materials and the like. Such bucket and pails are slightly tapered and have perimeter lips that provide structural rigidity while also providing handles.
Once such buckets or pails are emptied of their materials, they are often stacked together to reduce clutter and to make handling easier. While some stacked buckets or pails may end up being discarded, because of their value many are transported to another location where they can be cleaned and refilled or re-used for other purposes. This reduces cost while also reducing disposal problems. With stackable buckets and pails their slightly tapered bodies and perimeter lips are designed to assist stacking.
While stackable buckets and pails have proven themselves to be very useful, they do have at least one serious problem. Once stacked removing buckets or pails from the stack can be very difficult. The tight taper tolerances can produce vacuums between stacked elements. Such vacuums can make it extremely difficult to pull buckets or pails apart. Residual materials in the pails as well as dirt or other foreign matter can also tightly bind pails together. Much time can be wasted trying to separate buckets and pails from a stack. Should an entire stack of buckets or pails require separation it may take two people an hour or more of time to do so. Even then there is no guarantee of total success.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a device which can help separate stacked buckets and pails. Preferably, such a device would quickly and easily separate buckets and pails from a stack with minimal effort. Beneficially, such a device would be both rugged and suitable for being made available at low-cost. In practice such a device would provide significant mechanical advantage when separating pails. Ideally, such a device would be suitable for use by one or possibly 2 people and would not require a large amount of area to operate.